(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to a copy ratio (magnification or reduction ratio) setting apparatus and method for use in image forming apparatus such as copiers and printers.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In a conventional copier equipped with an automatic copy ratio selecting function, a document size and a paper size are found by detecting means so as to determine the optimum copy ratio, thereafter a copying operation is executed with the above copy ratio. According to the above method, however, the size of a document image is not considered at all for obtaining the copy ratio. Therefore, a document with a large margin is inevitably duplicated into a copy with a large margin. There has been a demand that a document with a large margin be duplicated into a copy with a smaller margin, which is not accomplished by this method.